Trump Mobile exposed customers' personal data | Hacker News Reader

Trump Mobile exposed customers' personal data

techcrunch.com

260 pointsrippeltippel123 comments

I would not have believed you if you had told me they had the engineering and operations talent to prevent personal data leaks, among many other things.

I would not have believed that they had 'engineering' or 'operations'.

"Hello, Aliexpress seller? Can you paint them gold?"

Is about how I expect it all went.

You underestimate the laziness.

"Can you paint them gold? And how about custom packaging and drop-shipping as well?"

This has to be an absolute treasure trove for scammers. A list of the most gullible people around.

Has anyone yet seen one of those phones? Was it a honeypot all along? (A la https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Trojan_Shield)

Edit0: they seem to exist and they have a headphone jack? Incredible.

I was going to say that I saw some unwrapping videos online, but then I saw... https://www.theverge.com/gadgets/936018/trump-mobile-t1-phon....

Personally, I still use my BidenPhone, which was an upgrade from my 2009-era ObamaPhone brick. /s

Was the /s needed?

You misunderestimate the gullibility of the average human. The \s is always needed (though the interrobang is also acceptable).

There have been quite a few punctuations proposed for indicating sarcasm, but interrobang not one of them - that (‽) is literally a combined ? and !, and is (per wikipedia) for "a question in an excited manner, expresses excitement, disbelief, or confusion in the form of a question, or asks a rhetorical question".

This page - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation - has sarcasm ones (but I don't think any are as well known as the interrobang, which itself isn't exactly universally used... though personally I'm weird enough to have a keyboard shortcut to type it on my phone)

> I'm weird enough to have a keyboard shortcut to type it on my phone)

I'm not the only one‽

You thought you were‽ <3

(Unrelated, do you work at Paradox? Or 3 letters in your username coincidental to their abbreviation?)

PDX is the airport code for Portland, OR.

-- mikeSEA

Ah, that makes sense considering a few comments back they said they're in the "Pacific Northwest"! Thanks :)

I find all "/s" tags to be offensive to comedy.

Can you imagine "A Modest Proposal (/s)" ?

Two peeves in one here:

The "/s" is just punctuation, same as "!" or "?" or even ".", which was a radical suggestion at one point. Punctuation isn't bad, it's not necessarily good either, but it is often useful. It should be judged based on whether it improves the ability to communicate via the written word by encoding nuance that would have been expressed verbally.

And A Modest Proposal isn't comedy, it's also not sarcasm, it's satire. Modern satirists may have confused themselves into thinking that the point of satire is to be subtle, but this is a disastrous idea. Satire is political commentary, it's supposed to be so over-the-top and starkly obvious in its intent that it cannot possibly be misconstrued as accidentally arguing in favor of what it's trying to argue against. This is why, for example, Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers is bad satire: if someone has to ask "is this satire?", or someone has to helpfully point out that something is intended to be satire, then it's bad satire by definition.

/s is not punctuation, it's an explanation. And explaining the joke kills it, and also insults the audience. Sometimes the ambiguity of a statement is itself powerful, as it reveals how one side can wholeheartedly believe something the other finds absurd.

One should only use /s if the comment is really so devoid of absurdity that it can be misinterpreted.

GOOD: Trump has done a lot of good for Americans /s

BAD: Trump is the greatest human ever born and is entitled to prima nocta with all brides /s

Re: sarcasm vs satire. You're mostly arguing the dictionary. The /s "sarcasm" markup is used when satirizing some POV, not just strictly for sarcasm.

You overestimate the number of native English speakers here, and underestimate the difficulty of decoding tone from short written text.

Misunderstanding can produce a lovely form of comedy at times.

The real joke is the "Obama Phone" meme from back in the day, is from the Lifeline project that was started by Reagan.

It's funny to see how all the history has been scrubbed from the Wikipedia entry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lifeline_(FCC_pro...

In theory, maybe? This is behind a paywall...

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/gadgets/trump-mobile-phone-revi...

Title: Trump Mobile T1 phone test: device no longer ‘Made in the USA.’

Heading: We tested the Trump Mobile phone. It was 9 months late and no longer ‘Made in the USA.’

And then there's https://www.cnet.com/pictures/the-t1-trump-phone-is-the-same... (linked in the sibling comment at The Verge)

"Trump Phones Are Finally Here—And People Aren’t Happy"

From the CNET article:

> There is a headphone jack, but it's on the top of the phone.

They say that like it is a bad thing. I've always preferred the headset jack on the top because if I'm using the device while sitting and the jack is on the bottom it interferes with resting my phone holding hand the table if I'm at my desk or on my chest or leg if I'm the couch.

The main argument I've heard for jack on the bottom is that most people normally put their phone in their pocket with the top down, so if the jack is on top you have to flip it.

Google is telling me that jack on top was the norm in the early days of smartphones but gradually changed as the pocket argument won out.

Of course this wouldn't matter at all if more phones rotated the screens so that the display was upright even if the phone is upside down. Then everyone could have the headphone jack where they want.

I think it's about when you put your phone in your pocket, you have to have it top-up while most people put it top-down, shortening the lenght of the cable and pushing against the connector. In that optic top jack is worse, I believe

> Of course this wouldn't matter at all if more phones rotated the screens so that the display was upright even if the phone is upside down

Generally I don't want to get my skin oils all over the lenses on my really expensive smart phone.

They went instead with "Assembled in the USA" printed on the box, which means that the phone was put in its box in Florida.

"Official" MAGA hats now say "Made in PRC" as if their wearers are too stupid to realize that means People's Republic of China, after the backlash against "Made in China". It's not a bad bet, actually: a media outlet back in the day polled a bunch of Republican voters and asked "If the government were to introduce, instead of Obamacare, some form of Affordable Care Act, would you be opposed?"

(And the number one Google query on the last election day? "Did Biden drop out?")

> they have a headphone jack

And an American flag with the incorrect number of stripes. I wonder which 2 colonies they decided weren't worth including on their phone.

I'm going to guess New York and Massachusetts.

The two surplus stars are going to Alberta and Greenland.

Oh.. you're not kidding. That's uh something.

The text is stylistically the last stripe

Wow, if that's actually the intent then that's _deeply_ disrespectful to the tens of thousands of original Americans who died in our revolutionary war.

Why all the hate for headphone jacks?

It’s insufficiently iPhone-like.

Oh it's praise from me, which is why its incredible

They must have hired the same developers as every other mobile operator.

Or the same devs as GiveSendGo and every other right-wing gifting platform

Gifting, or grifting?

Grifting!

"Walker said Trump Mobile is evaluating whether it needs to notify customers of the exposure of their personal data."

It was confirmed home/payment addresses were leaked, how is that not worthy of notification?

Because who's going to make them?

There are regulatory rules on when disclosure must occur. They're saying they're not going to bother if it's not required.

Even if they are required, who will hold them accountable? The FCC?

There are still rules in America? I thought the new law of the land was ...checks notes... governance by "strength, force, and power."

There was a time when telcos would print this information in a big book and deliver it to your porch for free.

Hell, in some states you can find these details rather quickly since there's so much that is considered public record.

relevant username.

Not quite true, though, because that book charged money in exchange for privacy.

The pharows know the best path to wealth. Just hold everyone hostage.

Except all you had to do was tell them you want to be unlisted, and BAM even the operator could not find your number. This is nothing like what is happening today, and I find this take does nothing but let them off the hook.

It's worthy if they think they'd get good click through rate on "privacy protection service" scam links in the emails.

Given the facts of who it is that's impacted, isn't this the first good thing the administration has done?

I'm sure those good people have nothing to hide.

My grandpa is almost 80 years old. He blatantly complains about stuff he doesn't understand but because he was once a big shot he think he does. He takes decisions almost as random as a 20 side dice but the numbers are just options and have no correlation among each other. Eventually he does something that seems to make sense, but if you live enough time with him you'll see that's by chance.

Wow, what's it like being the president's grandkid?

When I’m that I want my grandkid to think I am always right mysteriously and never realize it’s because I am past-posting.

He was once president or something of a Country Club where he only let the rich to go. It was kinda lame cause he kept bullying some foreigner workers for no reason. He was in charge until people noted he was even more senile than the previous club owner

>He takes decisions almost as random as a 20 side dice

I'll bet he knows it's a "20 sided die" though, or is he that dumb?

The Oxford dictionary would like a word, and mention that "dice" in singular form is the more frequent use in the gaming sense:

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/die_n1

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

this is especially problematic because now hackers have a comprehensive list of the most gullible people on the planet

Every problem, looked at from the right perspective, is actually a solution.

I wouldn’t call this a problem.

This is the dildo of consequences.

A $499 phone? Hah! Then what about a $11,500 Donald Trump autographed guitar that is actually made in China?

https://gettrumpguitars.com/products/american-eagle-electric...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lITeteouppU

You have to wonder what the appeal of this is. Would I want a guitar autographed by Andy Summers? Absolutely. Would I want a guitar autographed by Steve Wozniak? no, not really.

Right up there with the rest or telco.

> The company said there was no breach of Trump Mobile’s network, systems, or infrastructure.

Wait... what?

"I didn't lose your money because somebody broke into my house -- I only lost it because I left it sitting on the sidewalk. My house is actually fine, don't worry!"

The spokesperson said that the exposure was linked to a third-party platform provider that supports “certain Trump Mobile operations.” Walker did not name the provider.

Assuming somebody left a database open or password exposed.

My money is on unauthed mongodb or public s3 bucket

What are those? Our intern Bradley types victim, sorry Customer information in an excel spreadsheet all day and then emails it to his manager, who he's never met.

These days, Lovable + Supabase seem to be the way. Your options sound expensive, they require developers.

Well trump mobile almost definitely doesn't have a network, systems, or infrastructure to begin with. So I guess they are technically correct.

So they were hiring ex-DOGE?

Coffeezilla bought one of these thinking they’d never be delivered about a week before they announced they would be shipping soon. He wanted to do an exposé on the delays and thought Trump would never release the phone He will now end up with a crappy phone and his personal info exposed

They haven't shipped yet. Only 2 media/reviewer mockup phones have been seen in public.

I'm surprised that the idea for the Trump Phone was even conceived. I had thought that the drug king-pin Pablo Escobar pretty much owned the market for gold smartphones, and thus tainted it for anyone else.

What is the US president, if not the king-pin:est of drug kin-pins?

https://www.amazon.com/Fort-Bragg-Cartel-Trafficking-Special...

The picture in the article features Trump holding an iPhone.

He doesn't use any of this crap. He also wouldn't go within 100 feet of the vast majority of his supporters if he wasn't working an angle.

By the headline, I was half expecting "Trump Mobile was found selling customers' personal data"

This isn’t surprising. The entire enterprise was a grift to take advantage of gullible adherents to the name.

I can think of no product with the Trump name that hasn't proven to be a catastrophic disappointment or scam.

The only thing with trump I like is a hand of bridge.

we started using the term obama for that just because we hate saying that other word

The 1989 board game is supposedly an acceptable variation on Monopoly. I guess it's sales were a disappointment for the publisher, but not catastrophic.

The steaks were probably OK.

The steaks sold through Sharper Image?

I mean, his reality TV show did well. It was awful, but people liked it.

Oh, no! What an unexpected tragedy. In other news...

The only surprise would be that it is not deliberate. Previously, the Trump White House deliberately exposed citizens' personal data. That's what customers should expect.

Not just expect, but wish for it. "It's OK when our guy does it." You could make a campaign out of it: "Show your support by letting your data get sold!" That should stick it to whomever they dislike this week.

Hey it's no biggie they are exempt from all rules, norms, and principals. Their customers love it even more when rules are broken so this is more like a bonus for them.

When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the PII.

comment of the year award

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